The Hancock Family

I am Dan Hancock. My objective is to weave a colorful tapestry of people, events, and
places of the past — and thereby document my ancestry and family history. This
is not a simple listing of black and white statistics. Instead, I am combining
hundreds of pages of historical narratives and private biographical text, hundreds of old
family photographs, with thousands of well-researched facts. These are being interconnected
together using the power of the Internet, hyperlinks, and your browser — hopefully to
provide you with an interesting and interactive set of windows into the past. This is
my time machine of memories, a chronicling of the adventures of my family, and my way of
building a living legacy for them.

DNA analysis determined that my Hancock line of male ancestors migrated
across continental Europe thousands of years ago — and settled in Devon, England, many
centuries ago. DNA analysis also determined that my female ancestors spread from the Near East
to Europe thousands of years ago. In more recent times, my eight great-grandparents carried the
surnames Hancock, Bird, Coleman, Ellison, Fisher, McFarren, Samuels, and Williams. Here is the
unique story of their migration from Europe to Canada and the eastern United States, and then West
across the great plains as my ancestors sought a better life in California and the Napa Valley.

My great-grandfather Theodore Williams
came from a line of Pennsylvania ministers.
His paternal grandfather, the Reverend Matthew
Williams was born in Ireland in 1768.
His maternal grandfather, Thomas McCaw
was born in Ireland in 1797. Theodore, however, rebelled and left his family behind.
He then joined with
Myrtle Bird of Kentucky
and they soon thereafter travelled to Napa to start a new life. Myrtle's father,
Elam Bird, was born in 1834 and was in the 53rd
Regiment of the Kentucky Mounted Infantry Volunteers during the Civil War. Going back further: Elam's paternal grandparents
were Frank Bird
and Elizabeth Parvin, both born in the 1770s in Pennsylvania. Elam's maternal grandparents
were Rev. Elam Grizzel
and Anney McCollum, both born in the 1780s in Virginia.

This family history includes the lines of my first cousins, aunts, and uncles (e.g., Imboden, Lacaze, Martin,
Rath, and Whitthorne surnames) — as well as other close collateral family lines (e.g., Bean, Buck, Butler,
Duhig, Glos, McGinnis, Murphy, Nickels, and Rath surnames). The building of this Hancock family history is a
dynamic and a long-term work in process.

For guidance on the source and structure of the information at this website,
click on Guide to the Data.